In a sense, whatever
I write about these CDs is pointless:
with adulatory blogs already posted
and at least one on-line retailer
reporting out of stock at the time
of writing, they will have sold like
the proverbial hot cakes by the time
you read this review.

In the main, that
success will be justified – there
are over three hours of enjoyment
here – but I must begin with a word
of warning: nothing on these three
CDs is new, though the information
to that effect is carried in very
small, virtually illegible print on
the backs of the individual discs
and not on the outer box, where the
only information given – ‘This compilation
(P) and (C) 2007’ – is not very helpful,
to say the least.

Naxos have already
had one bite of the cherry in re-jigging
extracts from earlier recordings on
a 2-CD set, The World of Early
Music, and several items from
the first CD of that set are offered
again here. For this new collection
they contrive not to mention the recent
hype and nonsense surrounding The
Da Vinci Code and its offspring,
but that is clearly the peg on which
this collection hangs. This, too,
is a peg which Naxos have employed
before on another distillation from
earlier recordings, Leonardo da
Vinci: Music of his Time (8.558057
– see enthusiastic review
by KS).

I do, in fact, own
most of the parent recordings on which
the Ensemble Unicorn and Ensemble
Oni Wytars feature. Their approach
is very different from that of the
more scholarly but equally very enjoyable
Gothic Voices recordings for Hyperion,
several of which I have recently recommended
in their reissued bargain-price Helios
incarnations, and different again
from the Martin Best Ensemble on a
series of Nimbus recordings which
I have also recommended. There is
room for all of these and I certainly
welcome back these Naxos performances.

The second CD is
a straight reissue of Naxos 8.550771,
Adorate Deum, Gregorian Chant
from the Proper of the Mass. Those
impulse purchasers who already own
this CD will be justifiably cross
to discover that they already own
a third of the new set. Those who
do not already have the parent CD,
however, will find that they have
purchased a fair cross-section of
the chants performed at Mass – four
settings each of the introits, graduals,
alleluia verses and offertories and
five of the communion verses for different
Sundays of the year. The notes in
the booklet specify the occasions
but, unless you own a copy of the
Latin Tridentine Missal, you will
not have access to the all-important
texts.

If you want to chase
those texts, typing the headings given
on the CD into Google or Yahoo will
bring up the Latin text that you are
looking for. Typing in ‘Adorate Deum’
for example, the title of the first
track, will bring you an offer of
the propers, in Latin and English,
for the Third Sunday after Epiphany
from http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/04Jan/jan25pom.htm
- ignore the crass mistake in the
heading, which says ‘after Pentecost’!

There are many theories
about how plainchant was performed
in earlier times. I’m not going to
get bogged down in academic theorising:
I’m happy simply to say that, although
in theory such a jumble of texts from
different seasons ought not to work,
I thoroughly enjoyed what was on offer
here – 75 minutes of great beauty,
an ideal CD to relax to. If you want
a more coherent account of plainchant
texts with a common purpose, you may
well prefer the new Universal release,
Chant – Music for Paradise
(The Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz,
176 6016). That new CD is in my in-tray:
initial listening suggests that it
is highly recommendable, but watch
out for my full review. Chant is ‘in’
again; I note that EMI have just reissued
their recording of the Monks of Silos.

Though of monastic
origin, from a thirteenth-century
manuscript from Benediktbeuren Abbey,
the Carmina Burana offer a
very different kind of music – sharper
and often bibulous or bawdy – associated
with the goliards or wandering scholars.
These are the medieval originals from
which Carl Orff derived his famous
work – if anything, they are even
livelier in their original form and
they receive performances to match.

If you like the extracts
from the Carmina Burana here,
you may well be better served by going
for the Naxos CD from which they are
taken (8.554837). These are lively,
rumbustious performances of lively
music, very rightly recommended as
Recording of the Month by KS – see
review.
How to perform the Carmina Burana
is a somewhat inexact science; other,
rather more scholarly views may be
found on a recently reissued Telefunken
Das Alte Werk 2-CD recording (Studio
der frühen Musik/Thomas Binkley,
Warner Classics: 2564 697659) or on
a single-CD selection on the super-bargain
Apex label (Boston Camerata/Joel Cohen,
2564 620842).

The same is true
of the extracts from the Cantigas
de Santa Maria – having heard
them, you will probably wish to explore
further, on the parent CD (8.553133),
the Apex recording recommended by
EM (2564 619242 – see review)or from the Nimbus recording which
I recently reviewed (Martin Best Ensemble,
NI5081 – see review).
You could even buy all three without
too much overlap.

The Naxos performances
of both the Carmina Burana
and the Cantigas are more declamatory
than their rivals and this is true
of all the pieces performed here by
Ensemble Unicorn and Ensemble Oni
Wytars, separately or together. The
only CD featuring Oni Wytars which
I did not already have is From
Byzantium to Andalusia (8.557637
– see review by JW
with its link to WK’s review); the
performances from that programme are
sufficiently persuasive to add the
rest of that album to my wish-list.
Most easily done by purchasing the
remaining tracks as a download from
emusic at 24p each for those who take
the 50 tracks for £11.99 option.

The extracts from
the Oxford Camerata’s recordings of
Hildegard of Bingen will almost certainly
whet your appetite for the parent
CD (Heavenly Revelations, 8.550998)
and their other Hildegard recording
(Celestial Harmonies, 8.557983).
Whilst these are not the last word
on Hildegard, they will serve very
well as an introduction to her. A
word of warning – the music of this
twelfth-century polymath and visionary
is habit-forming; after the Summerly
performances you will want to turn
to the Gothic Voices (A Feather
on the Breath of God, Hyperion
CDA66039, also in a mid-price 3-CD
set) and the numerous recordings by
Sequentia on the DHM/BMG label.

The ensemble Estampie
take their name from a medieval dance,
an example of which they offer on
track 17 of the first CD. Once again,
you may well be better served by buying
the parent CD, Under the Greenwood
Tree (8.553442, also available
to download from classicsonline).
Their performances are recommendable,
though I would have preferred a little
more oomph in Kalenda Maya
(CD1, track 11).

The short single
item here from Shirley Rumsey should
also lead the listener to pursue her
Music of the Spanish Renaissance
(8.550614, from which Guardame
las vacas is taken) and other
recordings. The other performers also
acquit themselves well.

In such a varied
programme there are bound to be a
few typos. The first track of the
third CD is billed as Bach, bene
venies on the insert; in fact,
it isn’t a welcome song for JS Bach
or any of his musical family but an
invitation to Bacchus: Bache, bene
venies. The Naxos website, from
which I have cut and pasted the details,
corrects most of these. I have corrected
other items from the original Naxos
CDs; I apologise for any which I may
have missed.

More serious is the
lack of texts and translations, which
some of the parent CDs – that of Carmina
Burana, for example – provide.
If less space had been given to the
brief history of the Templars, easily
obtained elsewhere, a more detailed
account of the music, together with
texts and translations, could and
should have been offered. Those of
the Carmina Burana can easily
be found online by typing in their
first words.

I seem to have spent
most of this review writing about
and recommending the parent CDs from
which Time of the Templars
is taken. My final recommendation,
then, is to go for those originals.
Good as the three Templar CDs are,
they will inevitably whet your appetite
for more. The third CD, for example,
contains so many items from the On
the Way to Bethlehem: Music of the
Medieval Pilgrim (8.553132) that
you may well find yourself better
satisfied with the more coherent programme
on that recording than with its scattered
offspring here.

I haven’t got space
here to list the other parent recordings,
but they can easily be found on the
Naxos website. While you are about
it, you may well wish to consider
the one Unicorn/Oni Wytars CD not
excerpted here: Music of the Troubadours
(8.554257), a viable cheaper alternative
to the various Martin Best/Nimbus
recordings which I have recently reviewed
and recommended.

You could, of course,
go for this 3-CD set and supplement
what you have here by downloading
extra tracks from the parent recordings
from classicsonline (most tracks @
79p or £4.99 for complete albums)
but that would probably end by costing
more than the parent CDs at the very
reasonable Naxos prices.

Review
IndexesBy
Label Select a label and
all reviews are listed in Catalogue orderBy
MasterworkLinks
from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to
the review
indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Reviews
from previous monthsJoin the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the
discs reviewed. detailsWe welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin
Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to
which you refer.